Watch Rachel Maddow Highlights: Dec. 15

this is something you may not have known was going on this week i want to show you the front page from the milwaukee journal sentinel earlier this week milwaukee journal sentinel in wisconsin of course you see the headline there across the very top of the masthead key republican slams election review republican state senator kathy bernier calls exercise baseless comma dangerous state senator kathy bernier a republican who leads the state elections committee says the republican commissioned review of the 2020 election results in wisconsin is firing up people who don't understand elections a republican state senator criticizing the republican review of the election results in wisconsin that was page one of the journal sentinel earlier this week the following day the journal sentinel editorial board wrote a blistering editorial cheering for that republican cheering for that republican and her willingness to take that stand look at this quote kathy bernier stood up for the truth on monday the republican chair of the state senate elections committee knows that it may lead to vile threats against her and almost certainly will come at a political cost she did it anyway that's courage finally a republican leader in wisconsin stood for democracy senator bernier eviscerated the partisan review of the 2020 election that republican assembly speaker robin vos launched to appease former president donald trump she called the republican inquisition exactly what it is a charade she knows far more than the man conducting the review does about the subject of which she speaks kathy bernier oversaw elections for 12 years as the county clerk in chippewa county she's seen what is plain as day repeated lies by trump and republican politicians from washington dc to madison wisconsin those lies are undermining confidence in the most basic of american institutions the ballot box all the lies and ceaseless provocation comes at a serious cost 68 of republicans nationwide do not have confidence in the 2020 election according to a november poll what they're doing is dangerous in addition to threatening democracy some people are also threatening elections officials top officials in both milwaukee and madison wisconsin have been menaced as the lies spread and took root it has never been harder in wisconsin or in the nation to do the hard work of actually ensuring election integrity and it's never been harder to do the hard work of actually telling the truth about the threats to our democracy but on monday senator kathy bernier told the truth and every citizen of our state should thank her that's the milwaukee journal sentinel again this week shining a light and really standing up and cheering for a republican who is being brave on this subject who is the whole rest of her party nationwide and statewide is indulging in this stuff she is standing up and she's the chair of the elections committee in the senate in wisconsin she's standing up as a republican and saying actually you know what no this is all nonsense i'm not going along with it and it cannot be an easy thing for a republican to do but she is doing it this is a charade there's a simple explanation for almost every single thing that people accuse election officials of doing these made up things that people do to jazz up the base is just despicable and i don't think any elected legislator should ever play that game we have a great system here and no one should falsely accuse election officials of cheating they say but we don't have confidence in milwaukee and we don't have confidence in madison just remember you take it down to the micro level there are volunteer poll workers practically volunteer working every single poll and every single poll have people that are just as honest as you and i working that poll no election is perfect but there is not evidence of intentional malfeasance no evidence that the election in 2020 wasn't accurate when benjamin franklin came out of the convention and our constitution was created he was asked what kind of government do we have and he said a republic if we can keep it we're in jeopardy of losing it you can hear the emotion in her voice there at the end it can't be easy republican state senator kathy bernier in wisconsin taking on her party and the way they are still trying to undermine the election results republicans in the wisconsin legislature announced just today that their election review in 2020 they're going to extend it they were supposed to end it by the end of the calendar year they now say it's going to extend into 2022 and they're going to give it lots more taxpayer funding these two guys from opposite sides of the partisan political tracks formed together a bipartisan legal defense network specifically for election officials the elections officials legal defense network they formed has signed up top shelf a-list lawyers and law firms all over the country to volunteer their services to to represent and defend election workers at all levels who get threatened now because of their work who get who are facing intimidation and potentially malicious legal actions or even prosecution because they work on elections this week ginsburg and bower went to wisconsin saying that their network that they formed to defend election workers has noticed an intensification of threats against election officials in wisconsin they said in an op-ed they published together right before they arrived wisconsin has become ground zero for attempts by political actors to achieve partisan control over a state's election process in conjunction with this partisan 2020 election review the republicans have been carrying out bower and ginsburg said that wisconsin has quote featured baseless threats of criminal prosecution against election officials they showed up in wisconsin this week basically to say are here to help they showed up there this week to backstop that republican senator kathy bernier who was willing to sit there with them and take that stand they showed up there this week also to publicly warn that the trump election deniers who are now threatening public servants in that state they should think twice they might need to back up off of that those election officials who should be defended and are looking for defense will be defended and the network is available to provide them with that legal counsel should they need it and we will do so quickly we've pressure tested it we have been able to do this for election officials around the country and we will continue to do that i should also point out that those who are issuing those threats should understand that properly represented election officials who are defending themselves will have something to say about abuse of process about malicious prosecution about people in law enforcement who have law degrees who are disregarding the constraints on their behavior imposed by the bar rules and who can face a call for disciplinary action for miss using their licenses or in the case of public officials misusing their official responsibility for partisan political purposes to try to subvert the electoral process by undermining the ability of election officials through threats and intimidation to do their jobs in other words if you're coming for elections officials if you are threatening and intimidating election officials you better come correct because that is not a free punch that is not something that you these are not folks who you can freely swing at and freely intimidate in this way there will be consequences for people who maliciously do this joining us now is bob bauer former white house counsel uh senior advisor to president biden's campaign he's now law professor at nyu mr bauer it's really nice to see you thanks for making time to be here tonight it's a pleasure to be here thank you what's the relationship between this now apparently indefinitely extended review this partisan revision that republicans are doing in wisconsin and the kinds of threats to election workers that you and mr ginsburg have set about trying to help people defend themselves from yes the audit is one of the tools in the current toolkit for intimidating and harassing election officials these are not professional audits in wisconsin the assembly directed audit led by a former state supreme court justice michael gableman whose name appeared on your screen this mr gableman has acknowledged he doesn't know anything about running an election but however he did come into the audit with a view that the 2020 election had resulted in theft it was fraudulent voters had been stolen from so he knows nothing about elections or how they run but he had an opinion and he's the person the assembly chose to put in charge of this audit we've seen this before we've seen this in say arizona with the so-called cyber ninjas audit that was also an embarrassment it once again involved people who did not know anything about running an election much less auditing one after the fact but election officials now understand and this is the key point that partisan actors are seeking to subvert nonpartisan election administration and i came to know ben ginsburg quite well over the years of course we've been on the opposite side of the partisan divide in any number of contexts but i came to know him very well when we co-chaired president obama's commission on election administration and we understood then that the country was supposed to be moving and the commission was meant to help the country continue to move in the direction of nonpartisan election administration what we're seeing is a 180 degree radical turn in the opposite direction toward partisan control of the electoral process you have been sort of sounding an alarm about that for months now not just the intimidation of election workers which you and ben ginsburg are taking concrete action to try to defend those folks but specifically that partisan hijacking of election administration processes what do you think what have you come to believe is the best bulwark against that we need to do a number of things we need really an all systems approach to solving the problem we need to give election administrators around the country protection which is why we're through the network offering them pro bono legal defenses and as you point out i think those who would attack them know as you put it is not a free punch that's certainly part of it we need to resist the enactment of laws that are designed to allow partisans to take over the polling place and limit the ability of polling place workers to actually create a safe space for voting and we're seeing that problem develop in states that are enacting statutes they could have extremely harmful consequences for the conduct of elections in the polling place in the united states congress certainly should take a look at the electoral account act and that is in desperate need of reform we saw what happened on january 6 even before the rioting began the baseless objections and the call on vice president pence as president of the senate to falsify the tally in some way so there's an enormous amount to be done here to bring back what we thought we would see after the florida presidential recount in 2000 which is a country that was fully committed to nonpartisan expert election administration now we see a movement that just has to be resisted toward putting partisans in control of the electoral process where they clearly have a stake and counting the results the way they would like to see them counted bob one last very quick question it's something that you mentioned in your op-ed this week am i correct that the election officials uh legal defense network that you and mr ginsburg have formed that you are still soliciting volunteers you're still looking for lawyers and law firms to do pro bono representation for election workers when they are threatened you're still looking for people to help we are very much welcoming the help we have recruited now hundreds of lawyers we have deployed them in particular circumstances to help and to consult with election officials under attack our view however is that as the presidential campaign of 24 approaches and even in 2022 we have to have a massive force available to provide this kind of defense so yes we would welcome the help and we're continuing to look for it the election officials legal defense network a truly bipartisan effort um bob bauer former white house counsel uh thank you so much for being with us mr bauer it's nice to see you thanks thank you very much pleasure all right we've got much more ahead tonight stay with us [Music] before we bring dr kessler on here i just want to show you one thing even before omicron has fully taken hold here we of course have recently been seeing covid numbers shoot back up and in a lot of states hospitals are as overwhelmed as they have been ever but i want to show you something that to me at least puts a really fine point on the question of how we're going to be able to get out of this and how we're going to be able to get through what we're in right now this is data released today by the cdc and this is newly reported cases of covid in nursing homes and if you look down at the axis along the bottom of your screen you see that's that's dates um so it starts in early october the first column there is october 2nd and then as you go further to the right on the graph it carries through forward in time and it carries all the way through last week so what this shows is that over time you know nursing home case numbers are going up and nursing homes of course from the very beginning have been the epicenter of the pain and the death in this pandemic seeing nursing home numbers sharply climb back up again uh since the end of october that's really worrying especially because we know that populations in nursing homes when they get it they're often in for the worst outcomes these are older populations very often sicker populations people in nursing homes are people you really do not want to get infected but now i want to be very specific about what you're looking at here this line on your screen that we're showing you right here this is the increase in nursing home covert infections recently specifically among people in nursing homes who have not been vaccinated now here look this line is better a little flatter this is still a line that's rising it still shows cova case numbers rising but not as steeply this line shows coveted cases in nursing home residents who have a baseline level of vaccination so the really bad numbers are for the unvaccinated people in nursing homes better numbers but frankly still bad still rising um our nursing home residents with baseline vaccination but now look at this the good news in this graph is this third line this green line that you see on the bottom of your screen that green line is nursing home residents who have gotten a booster shot that's case numbers reported in that population their numbers are not going up at all it's flat flat flat that is boosted nursing home residents about half of all nursing home residents in the u.s have been boosted imagine if they all were that is about as blunt of a case as i can make for why people ought to get booster shots certainly in nursing homes but presumably you can extrapolate to the broader population from that we're being told by the experts now that boosters are also apparently our best defense against the omicron variant about which there has been a ton of news today joining us to get through some of it now is dr david kessler he has helped guide us on this show through questions like this many times before as you know he is the top science advisor to the biden administration's coveted response dr kessler it is an honor as always to have you here thank you for making time to be here tonight you did a great job explaining that rachel let me ask if it's fair to extrapolate from that then are our booster shots as clearly helpful as that nursing home data would seem to suggest should that guide us not just for that specific population but for all of us absolutely no question and let me explain how it works so if you boost the immune system with a third dose after a pause that produces enhanced immunity and that's what you saw in those graphs that was important in the nursing homes and it's especially important as we face omicron in terms of omicron it seems like just like you and the other experts told us it does seem like it is taking hold here fast the cdc says omicron already makes up about three percent of what's known to be circulating in the country right now do you think that is a a fair estimate do we do we have a good way of of measuring that and do you think that that number is going to rise rapidly i think we have to expect that they're going to be a lot of cases in the united states i think the current number while you said it's three percent nationwide i think in certain areas such as new york it's estimated to be about 13 and it's doubling every two days so there are going to be a lot of omicron cases but with vaccines and boosts more of those cases will be mild so extrapolate from that graph to omicron yes we have to be prepared over the next six weeks a lot of omicron cases strategy vaccines boosts take care caution more of those cases will be mild we talked a few weeks ago when the omicron a couple of weeks ago when the omicron variant was first sort of emerging about the question of whether or not there is any difference in how sick on average people get when they're infected with the omicron variant versus how sick on average they get when they're infected with the delta variant do we have any further clarity on that it seems like we do know that omicron is looking to push out delta that it is more transmissible that it will become potentially the dominant variant potentially quickly seems like we have clarity on that but do we have clarity on whether or not it causes any difference in the symptom profile compared to what we've been living with clarity no but certainly some preliminary evidence from the south african scientists who've been absolutely terrific in sharing that their data with us we see about a 30 reduction in severity um so i think we have to see a lot of cases in the uk right now just you know spent the last hour just looking at hospitalizations over the next two weeks let's see what happens to those hospitalizations and we will know i mean it is possible this might be milder but i'm speculating at this point i appreciate you being honest about sort of what's known and what's not known there i think i i think we've seen a lot of people sort of jumping to conclusions about what they're guessing the data is ultimately going to show but again as you point out we need to you don't know what you don't know [Music] you

Channel: MSNBC

Views: 403,190

Keywords: MSNBC, MSNBC latest, Politics, News, wisconsin election audit, wisconsin, wisconsin gop, wisconsin republicans, gop, republicans, election audit, ballot audit, election fraud, booster shots, covid, vaccines, maddow, rachel maddow

Id: 5GNqJnBETxo

Length: 20min 12sec (1212 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 16 2021